“This study validates something that seems to be intuitive, which is just how important nurturing parents are to creating adaptive human beings,” says lead author Joan L. Luby, MD, professor of child psychiatry. “I think the public health implications suggest that we should pay more attention to parents’ nurturing, and we should do what we can as a society to foster these skills because clearly nurturing has a very, very big impact on later development.”

Deborah McNelis's insight:

This can be so reassuring for caring parents! These findings can also be inspiring to those wanting additional evidence that there is a critical need to place greater emphasis on this area and time of development.

"For daycares and schools to have an effective way to help children for success in life, is to have low teacher child ratios to increase the opportunity to foster relationships with every child. And then use the understanding that the brain is experience dependent t. Children in schools can be engaged collectively in a caring climate and create activities that benefit other human beings."

"f we truly want to help children thrive in life ….and want to have an incredibly positive impact on our world, it is VITAL that we place the emphasis on the development of relationships with other human beings …"

Researchers have found that something as small as text message reminders can help children born into poor families close the gap with richer students.

Deborah McNelis's insight:

There are enormous inequalities in education in the United States. A child born into a poor family has only a 9 percent chance of getting a college degree, but the odds are 54 percent for a child in a high-income family. These gaps open early, with poor children less prepared than their kindergarten classmates.

Research shows that children come into the world with a positive bias—they are prepared to be empathic and show kind behaviors toward others as soon as they are able to—but we are squandering that potential. UNICEF ranks American children 26th out of 29 rich countries on overall measures of well-being, and American kids rate themselves in the bottom quartile on measures of happiness.

The prospect of tinkering precisely with memory has tantalized scientists for years. “A lot of people had been thinking along these lines,” says Sheena Josselyn, a senior neuroscientist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, who studies the cellular underpinnings of memory, “but they never dreamed that these experiments would actually work. No one ever thought that you could actually, really do this.”

Parents who fight in front of their children risk damage to the child’s ability to recognise emotion, a new study suggests.

Researchers from New York University (NYU) found that such children would also struggle to control their own emotions. Lengthy periods of poverty during early childhood could also have a detrimental effect on their emotional development.

"The amygdala is a key “fear center” in the brain. Alterations in the development of the amygdala during childhood may have an important influence on the development of anxiety problems, reports a new study in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry."

What Causes Misbehavior? One of the questions I have asked myself as a mom, the question I am often asked as a therapist and the one that continually presents itself in my role as consultant to early childhood programming is, "What is causing this child to behave this way?" Generally, this question is in relation to misbehavior. Interesting how that happens, isn't it? Seldom do we stop and ponder what is making children behave...even though we know that whatever we pay attention to, we get more of! "

This is an EXCELLENT question and there are no good answers! A quote from the article states:

"The outcomes of the standards movement, including its social-emotional impact on young children, are rarely discussed. It seems that everyone in education is to be held accountable except those who develop the standards. There is growing concern that current standards and practices are a factor in rising rates of aggression and serious misbehavior in preschools and kindergartens."

When students use their bodies in the learning process, it can have a big effect, even if it seems silly or unconnected to the learning goal at hand. Researchers have found that when students use their bodies while doing mathematical storytelling (like with word problems, for example), it changes the way they think about math. “We understand language in a richer, fuller way if we can connect it to the actions we perform,” said Sian Beilock, professor of psychology at the University of Chicago.

The brain doesn’t fully develop until about the age of 25. This fact is sometimes quite surprising and eye opening to new parents and early years professionals who are interacting with children every day. It can also be somewhat overwhelming to contemplate. It is essential to realize however, that the greatest time of development occurs in the year...

Couldn't agree more: "Children also must have appropriate and safe opportunities to experience things for themselves and feel the sense of accomplishment that goes along with completing tasks independently. "

Humans, by nature, are designed to grow, learn, work, and play in groups. By the time a child is 10, he or she has created and maintained dozens of key relationships — parents, siblings, friends, teachers, and more. Throughout life, these relationships satisfy our primary needs. It is the brain that allows these social connections. Unique neural systems change in response to the waxing and waning of relationships in our lives — forming a landscape created by the history of our emotional experiences. Relationships can bring us comfort, safety, and joy. Yet relationships can change or even end. And then we experience painful emotions.

Researchers at Utah State University asked three groups of participants to complete a task that tests whether they could resist instant gratification for a better reward later on. Before and during the task, the nature group viewed images of mountains, whereas the other groups looked at pictures of buildings or triangles. Participants who viewed natural scenes made less impulsive decisions than the other groups.

Deborah McNelis's insight:

Numerous studies demonstrate the benefits of nature on our brain and behavior as this article points out... "Gazing at images of the great outdoors has been linked with a range of benefits, including pain relief, stress recovery and mood improvement"

Whether we're talking about preschool, elementary through secondary school, college, or even adult learners, I have serious objections to the idea that learning supposedly only comes via the eyes, the ears, and the seat of the pants. Schools -- and policymakers -- have for too long accepted the belief that learning best occurs while students are seated (and quiet, of course). The theory may have been understandable back when they didn't have the research to prove otherwise. But today we do.

Deborah McNelis's insight:

It is critical that this information is realized and clearly understood for the benefit of all!

There is on one way to make a classroom work best for students. We know they're individuals, and the "moving around part" would seem to offer great opportunities for engaging them with learning, not just sitting their passively.

the constant jargon that teachers are forced to use is rubbing off on our students. Not only is this meaningless for them but it's increasingly making their academic performance their responsibility too. Do primary school children really need that kind of pressure when they're so young?

When parents bring their four-month-olds to a well-baby checkup at the Children’s Clinic in Portland, OR, Drs. Teri Petersen, R.J. Gillespie and their 15 other partners ask the parents about their ...

Deborah McNelis's insight:

"The ACE Study found that childhood trauma was very common — two-thirds of the 17,000 mostly white, middle-class, college-educated participants (all had jobs and great health care because they were members of Kaiser Permanene) experienced at least one type of severe childhood trauma. Most had suffered two or more."

"A study using brain images from “quiet” MRI machines adds to the growing body of evidence that breastfeeding improves brain development in infants. Breastfeeding alone produced better brain development than a combination of breastfeeding and formula, which produced better development than formula alone."

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.